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Industrial gases, halons and refrigerants
The manufacture of industrial gases is one of the classifications recorded against the company. Halons and refrigerants are the two families of material the company is named for, and both are treated as controlled substances rather than as ordinary stock.
Product, grade, container
An enquiry about a gas is really three enquiries in one. Which gas, at which grade or purity, in which container arrangement. Change any one of the three and the answer changes with it — the handling, the labelling, the documentation that has to travel with it, and often whether the request can be met at all.
So a gas enquiry is answered in those terms. What can be offered is set out in writing against the specification you give, and what that offer depends on is set out with it.
A material with a long tail
Halons were used for decades as fire-suppression agents, and although their general use has long since been restricted in the United Kingdom, the material itself has not disappeared. It is still found in decommissioned systems, in cylinders left in plant rooms, and in vessels whose labels have faded past the point of being trustworthy.
Halon is dealt with here as regulated material from the first question onwards. The point of the process is that the substance is identified, recorded and routed correctly, and that whoever hands it over ends up with paperwork that stands up if anybody asks about it later.
Recovery, reuse or disposal
Refrigerants come out of cooling and process plant for all the usual reasons: a system is being replaced, a plant is being stripped out, a charge has been contaminated, or a site is being cleared. What happens next depends almost entirely on what the charge turns out to be, which is why analysis often comes before any decision about reuse or disposal.
Fluorinated gases are subject to United Kingdom legislation covering their handling, recovery and record-keeping. Where an enquiry touches those rules, what applies to it is set out in writing before anything is agreed.
What to tell us
- The substance, or what it is believed to be, and where that belief comes from — a label, a system record, or a guess.
- The quantity, and the number and type of containers involved.
- The condition of the containers, including anything you would want a person to know before touching them.
- Whether the material is coming out of a live system, a decommissioned one, or storage.
- Whether you need it identified, recovered, or dealt with as waste — or whether that is the question.